A few months ago, I did a wholesale show with a group of wonderful ladies. One benefit to exhibiting in this group was that we could take orders for each other if someone stepped away. While we looked at each other’s items to get a feel for the different product lines, one of my booth […]

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The key to Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) success on Etsy is picking the most effective keywords for your shop and items. This helps your products come up faster for customers who are looking online via Google, Etsy, and other search engines. Here are three simple ways to generate keywords and phrases to use in […]

With only seven weeks until Christmas, it’s time to ramp up your exposure so that you can sell more handmade items for the holidays. A lot of my clients and readers have said they aren’t doing craft fairs anymore because of the hefty booth fees or concerns that many of the organizers are allowing vendors […]

The holiday sales are upon us. Whether you sell at craft shows where holiday gift items are already selling or online where sales will soon start coming – in it’s time to think about how to set a stage in order to entice customers to buy from YOU. Image Source: Flickr While there is a […]

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Image Source: Flickr Have you recently published a book? Been accepted into a prestigious program or school? Are you about to release a new product or service? Press releases are written statements to the media to announce a wide range of items. Many people send a press release to the media in hopes that a […]

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Today we are going to take two posts that I’ve written here—Creating Audience Profiles and How to Use Pinterest for Creative Businesses—and mash them together for a really fun project. Ready? In the first post I gave you all sorts of insight about creating audience profiles using analytics from Facebook and Google. Today I want […]

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By now you’ve heard all of the hoopla about Pinterest. You may even be fairly addicted to the image pinning site and spend a fair amount of time getting inspiration for your home decor, recipes or party ideas. But you can also use Pinterest to promote your creative business. The first thing to do is […]

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Following up on the last post about mentors, lets look at some other ways you might find a mentor. Image Source One thing you may have not thought of is that a mentor doesn’t even have to be someone you really know personally. Maybe a mentor could be someone who is higher up in your […]

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I used to have a Humanities professor who was fond of saying, “The more you know, the less you know”. She was talking about life and the world in general, but it also applies to owning a small business. Because of the nature of creative businesses many of us slowly “fell into” it. We started […]

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When I started selling crochet back in 2007, contract agreements were the last thing on my mind. I was pretty green and not very business savvy. Neglecting this step opened me up to being taken advantage of, cheated, and lied to by customers and contractors. The lessons I learned from those experiences are what help […]